Caroline had to admit, there was an air of excitement just listening to the urgency in his voice. “Then what?”
He tapped his desk with his index finger. “Then we all meet right here and we discuss the angle we are going to take. Together.”
“All right,” Caroline said.
He slapped his hands together. “Let’s go!”
Both Brad and Pam scurried out of his office at once—like roaches scattering at the stomp of a foot—but Caroline hung back.
“You too!” he said with false reproach.
“Thank you,” she said, and turned to go, but not before spotting the telltale gleam of moisture in his eyes. She didn’t dare turn back, somehow knowing he wouldn’t want her to.
Chapter Sixteen
“How about a truce?”
After a week of not hearing from Jack—even after she’d filed her report about Patterson—Caroline had to admit it was a relief to hear his smart-assed tone of voice on the other end of the line. But she had too much pride to just lay down her arms. “You don’t see me wavin’ any white flag!”
“No,” Jack countered, “I am.”
Caroline sat quietly on her end of the phone. She’d been looking over the financial reports Daniel had brought her to review, but her eyes were glazing over and now that Jack had called, her brain officially threw in the towel and quit for the day.
“But I’m all out of Get Out of Jail Free cards after this.”
She knew her tone sounded incensed, but she couldn’t help it. “You’re all out?”
“Didn’t we just agree to a cease-fire?”
Caroline rolled her eyes. “I don’t think we got that far.”
“Of course we did,” he assured her. “I smell the conciliatory feast and you’ve got to be hungry—it’s six-thirty.”
Were they really going to do this after nearly ten years?
There was quite a lot Caroline wanted—needed—to talk to him about, but she wasn’t about to sit here and try to convince herself that her interest in seeing him was purely professional. It wasn’t. She wanted to see him. This past week had been horrible, thinking he would never forgive her. “A little,” Caroline admitted, setting her reports down and shoving them aside.
“Good,” he said, “because you really are much too thin.”
“What is it with my weight? I’m starting to think you, Sadie and Rose Simmons all got together to conspire about how to fatten me up so no one will ever look at me again. Is that your idea of revenge?”
“Trust me,” Jack said. “People are looking.”
A tired smile curved Caroline’s lips. “People?”
“Well, I only know about one people.”
He was flirting with her . . . and it felt good.
“Person,” she corrected, falling for the bait, even though she knew he was goading the writer within. “People is plural.”
His tone took on a sober timbre, like a lawyer on the courtroom floor. “I wholeheartedly disagree, Ms. Aldridge. People can be singular as well. What about when they say, ‘Hey, she’s good people.’ ”
Caroline lifted a brow. “Who is they?”
“Did I say they? I meant me.”
Caroline laughed. God, she missed his easy banter. She missed him—even more than she dared to admit. “I never heard you say that before!”
“Of course I do—I say it all the time,” he assured. “Come to dinner with me tonight, and I’ll prove it. We’ll discuss the new publisher of the Tribune and I’ll be sure to tell you how she’s good people.”
No matter how confused Caroline might be over ninety percent of her life, there was nothing uncertain about this connection she and Jack shared. Despite the tension between them, it was as strong now as it had ever been—minus the trust issue. Could they survive without trust? “You still think so?”
“I know so.”
“What about Kelly?”
“What about her?”
“Well . . . I’ve been meaning to tell you, she stopped by the house.”
He answered her with silence. When he spoke again, she could tell by his tone that she had thrown him for a loop.
“Really.”
It wasn’t a question. Clearly, he hadn’t known, but either he wasn’t entirely surprised, or he was trying to keep his annoyance from ruining the uncharacteristically light banter between them—or both. “Your treat tonight?”
“I don’t know . . . depends on whether you’re going to consider this business or pleasure?”
Caroline smiled. “Jack, you can’t ask a girl out on a date and then ask her to expense it.”
“Oh,” he said, “then I guess I’m paying.”
“Then yes to dinner, and I’ll tell you all about Kelly’s visit,” she promised. “I was actually going to file a report, but wanted to talk to you before I did that, and it seems you’ve been avoiding me.”
“Not avoiding exactly.”
Caroline shuffled the papers in front of her, pushing them to another spot on her desk. “What else would you call it when I’ve been calling you for days and talking to your voice mail with no response.”
“That depends on whether you actually expected a response from a machine.”
“You know what I mean, Jack.”
“I had a little development on the case . . . I’ll tell you about that at dinner too . . . after you tell me about Kelly’s psycho visit.”
“Deal,” Caroline said. “How fast can you be there?”
“Five seconds. I’m parked outside.”
Caroline snorted. “Someone was very sure of himself!”
“No,” he countered. “I just don’t know a single Aldridge who can resist a newsworthy carrot. If I couldn’t appeal to your stomach or your heart, I knew I had an ace in my pocket.”
Caroline ignored the little jolt of joy she felt over his interest in her heart—and the thrill of excitement over his dangled carrot. “You’re incorrigible!”
“Come on down,” he directed, ignoring the accusation. “I’ll drive.”
There were cicadas and there were cicadas.
The average green-bodied variety, which emerged in the dog days of summer, generally went unnoticed. But there was another genus—the Magicicada. Emerging from the ground in biblical numbers every thirteen years, they formed a black, roaring cloud that devoured all green in its path, leaving the landscape ravaged and the frailest of striplings lifeless in its wake.
They climbed and attached themselves to nearby branches, shimmying out of their exoskeletons with fresh new skins and bulging red eyes, before launching into the air to sing for their mates.
The drone was maddening.
Once fertilized, the female returned to the trees to lay her eggs, and the newest generation of cicadas burrowed deep into the ground where they remained another thirteen years, feeding off a network of tangled roots . . . while they waited for the cycle to repeat.
In their wake, you found fragile carcasses attached to trees, inexplicably clinging to life in death, their gossamer wings looking like stained-glass windows, but with the glass shattered and plucked out—the temple of their bodies abandoned.
This was the same.
His body was an abandoned temple; all feelings of humanity had escaped through a crack in his physical form. Only the bloodlust remained in the deepest confines of his soul, like a thousand dark whispers smothered by layers of derma. And sometimes, like a plague of locusts, the endless buzz resurfaced, undeniable and psychotic in its influence.
Those were the times he feared the hunger most, when the voices rose to such a deafening roar that all reason was confounded by the sound.
It was rising now.
He had to unzip his skull and let out a little crazy—enough to function without suspicion. He didn’t know what would happen if he didn’t.
He had never let it go that far.
Chapter Seventeen
Jack took Caroline to a little Mediterranean café on South Market Street. Quai
nt mosaic and ironwork tables spilled onto the sidewalk and soft background music accompanied a delicious shared plate of Mediterranean fare. They sat in a corner surrounded by short potted palms—cozy and quiet. But the coziness was short lived. Whatever warmth Caroline had been feeling toward Jack didn’t survive dinner.
She told him about Kelly, and he listened quietly, reassuring her that she wouldn’t have to deal with Kelly again. Jack was pretty sure that, while she was temporarily angry about the entire situation, she was a good person and wouldn’t hurt a fly. Caroline wasn’t sure about that. In fact, she was pretty damned sure if Kelly were holding a fly swatter and Caroline were a fly in front of her face, she’d be as flat as the pita bread sitting on the table right now. Still, he said he would look into it and that satisfied her.
Kelly wasn’t what sent her over the edge.
Jack wanted her to retract her story. He wanted her to print the “official police story.”
“Just say you made a mistake.”
“Let me get this straight. You still don’t believe this is an isolated homicide, but you want me to report that it is anyway?”
He sat forward, leaning into the table, leaning into the pitch. “I’m just asking you to report the official story, Caroline. If you call the Public Information Officer, that’s exactly what he’ll tell you. No matter who this guy is—he’s likely to be following the story in the paper. If this isn’t an isolated incident, maybe the guy’s already gotten a taste for media attention. . . .”
The atmosphere at the paper was only now beginning to normalize, and Caroline was unwilling to compromise her relationship with Frank any more. “Can we quote you saying that you believe this is an isolated case?”
“No.”
“Because you don’t believe it?”
“Caroline, you owe me. . . .”
Caroline looked at him in that instant—really looked at him. His eyes were sunken and bloodshot, probably from lack of sleep. And while his clothes were neat, he obviously hadn’t shaved in days. He ran a hand through his hair, looking weary, but he was persistent.
“Look, I’m hoping that if we deny his existence, this guy will make a move to show everyone he’s out there.”
“No, Jack! I won’t play with the truth that way!”
He sat back in his chair, his blue eyes darkening as he studied her. “Seems you’re pretty choosy about your ethics,” he said after a moment.
Caroline tossed down the piece of pita bread she’d been munching on, her appetite vanishing. “That’s not even fair to suggest! I published the initial story because I believed I was doing the right thing. If you’re sitting here telling me you don’t believe it’s over, and yet you want me to say it is—I don’t care what the Public Information Officer has to say or what the official story is—you’re asking me to mislead the public and I won’t do it!”
They were like oil and water, Caroline decided in that moment. The feelings she had for him were undeniable, but she didn’t like him very much at this instant.
Thankfully, he didn’t ask her again, but the rest of the evening passed in a blur of quick, angry bites and accusatory looks. It was all Caroline could do to shove her food down without throwing it at him. She wasn’t sure which galled her most—that he was asking her to do this at all, or that he was asking her to do it under the guise of a stupid date.
She had foolishly gotten it into her head that he was trying to make it up to her and that he actually wanted her company—that maybe he still wanted to see if there was something left between them.
She tried to tell herself that he had essentially done to her no more than she had done to him—but something had changed for her—maybe because she wholly regretted having used him and she realized she still had strong feelings for him. Maybe she’d hoped he realized the same.
But this was nothing more than tit for tat. And it pissed her off.
By the time they got back to her car, Caroline had worked herself into a furious state that was only exacerbated by what she found on her return to the garage. Someone had written the word “BITCH” in capital letters through the thick yellow pollen coating her driver’s-side door.
The exit booth was unmanned, the lights out and the garage was mostly empty.
Jack got out, took a look around, then took her keys from her hand and opened her door to check inside her car. When he was sure it was safe, he started it for her. “I guess it’s time to visit the car wash,” he said, but his attempt at humor fell on deaf ears. Caroline didn’t find any of this funny at all. She hadn’t asked to be thrust into the middle of mayhem.
Although deep down she knew the thought was ridiculous, at the moment her life felt like a cruel joke—her mother’s way of saying with her last dying breath, “And you thought you were good enough. See, I told you so—you’ll never measure up!”
Tears stung the back of her lids. She swallowed hard.
Right about now, she desperately missed life in Dallas—free from serial killers and jealous girlfriends—free from crushing responsibility, decisions and expectations—and most of all, free from Jack!
He got out of her car and she slid in without saying a word. The last thing she heard him say before she slammed her car door and drove away was “I’ll talk to her, Caroline.”
She squealed out of the parking garage.
Jack had to stop himself from pulling out onto the road after her. She wouldn’t welcome his attention right now, but he wasn’t comfortable just letting her go without some reassurance that someone would be there to see her safe inside her house—which was ludicrous. He couldn’t be there to protect her every second of every day. Still, he couldn’t let her leave like this after finding something like that on her car.
Maybe they should have called a report of the graffiti in to have it on record—though there was no property damage, and if every person who had a nasty note left on their car reported it as a crime, there wouldn’t be enough manpower in the city to log all the complaints.
The truth was that if Caroline weren’t the daughter of Florence Aldridge, if they weren’t in the middle of looking for a killer, if she weren’t the woman he was still in love with, he wouldn’t even second-guess himself right now.
He would just let her go.
Caroline was so angry, she didn’t even wipe the smear off her car door.
Had Kelly done that?
He sure as hell intended to find out.
He called Josh first to see where he was, to see if he was heading to the Aldridge estate tonight. He was relieved to know that he was at his mother’s, just down the road, and he promised to go wait for Caroline to arrive. Jack explained what had happened, and thanked him, then he hung up and called Kelly.
She answered on the first ring, as though she had been expecting his call, so he asked her straight out.
“I didn’t do it,” she replied.
Jack couldn’t imagine who else would have done it, especially in light of her recent visit with Caroline. She was feeling needy and unhappy and maybe even a little angry at him for wasting her time. He couldn’t blame her.
“I said I didn’t do it!” she offered a second time, and her tone grew more furious.
Jack was so worked up he couldn’t take her at her word—not tonight. He wanted her to understand beyond any shadow of doubt that he was through. It was over between them. Finito.
Not that he had a chance in hell with Caroline at this point, because he’d managed to fuck that up too, but he felt for the first time in years that he was doing the right thing where his personal life was concerned.
And more to the point, he was feeling.
God, was he feeling.
Like complete and total shit.
He’d been going through the motions for too long now, just doing the job—whatever that meant. Even fucking had grown to be a perfunctory task, and he hated to admit that Kelly was just a vessel—not that he hadn’t tried to make a go of it. He had desperately wanted to love her. Ju
st as he had desperately wanted not to love Caroline.
People couldn’t help the way they felt.
But they could damned well control how they behaved. Kelly had every right to be angry with him. She didn’t have a right to defile Caroline’s car. He told her as much.
“For the last time,” Kelly screamed, “I didn’t do it!”
She hung up on him.
A lightning rod of anger shot up Jack’s spine and he nearly hurled his phone out the window. He tossed it onto the passenger seat, staring furiously out at the road ahead.
The moon was new, and the night dark. Crossing over the Ashley River, he left the glow of the city behind him, and drove into blackness.
He was angry.
Anger clouded judgment.
He wasn’t thinking straight and he needed to start.
Right now.
Whoever had written that note on Caroline’s car was angry too, or they wouldn’t have gone into a public garage to leave a message like that for a public figure.
Not a smart move.
Clearing the fog from his brain, he allowed himself to ask, “If not Kelly, who else would leave a message like that?”
Could it be connected to the attempted break-in at her house?
If that were the case, it would be personal. The murder of Amy Jones, by contrast, was not an act of anger. They were two separate things, he reassured himself. Completely unconnected. But who the hell had she pissed off?
Just about everyone, he realized.
On the heels of that thought came the realization that he hadn’t even had enough wits about him to check to see if there were surveillance cameras installed in the garage.
He turned the car around. If they were lucky, their artist’s moment of stupidity would be caught on tape.
As soon as Caroline pulled into the drive, she got out of the car and wiped her hand over every inch of her driver’s-side door, erasing the offending letters.
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